Imaging, big data analytics, robotics and clinical research are among the categories tech giant Royal Philips and French healthcare provider Rennes University Hospital (CHU Rennes) will be tackling together in a recently announced 5-year technology and innovation partnership.
AI for monitoring patients in ICUs, as well as AI algorithms to support digital pathology, will also be part of the intended outcomes for the partnership, which will give CHU Rennes access to Philips’ in-house expertise and open-innovation ecosystem to foster the creation of French tech start-ups that can translate research into clinical solutions.
“Philips and Rennes University Hospital are entering into a ground-breaking partnership aimed at significantly improving the stroke pathway and co-developing AI algorithms to improve care for the most acute patients, particularly those in the ICU,” said David Corcos, General Manager Philips France. “Leveraging the hospital’s clinical expertise and our respective innovation ecosystems, we believe we can jointly innovate to help the hospital’s healthcare professionals improve care and outcomes for their patients, while contributing to a more sustainable healthcare system.”
Spread across four sites, CHU Rennes has over 60 medical, surgical and imaging departments supporting care through every stage of life but is particularly known for its robotics and image-guided medical interventions.
According to the new partners, Philips will deliver new medical technologies and provide management and maintenance services for the hospital’s diagnostic and interventional imaging modalities. Moreover, “informatics solutions will offer central, high-resolution data capture and storage (data warehouses) to drive quality and efficiency improvements, and comprehensive visualization and analysis tools to enhance diagnostic confidence for complex medical cases. Philips Healthcare Transformation Services experts will help to optimize the hospital’s clinical pathways and patient experience, especially for intensive care units (ICUs) and neuro-radiology departments.”
Overall, the key elements of the partnership are collaborative research and innovation activities focused on areas that combine Philips’ technological expertise with Rennes University Hospital’s clinical expertise.
“The University Hospital of Rennes is particularly glad to join its forces with Philips in the framework of an original and ambitious partnership, unique in France, offering tremendous opportunities for innovation and co-development of new solutions to shape the future of medicine and patient care,” said Véronique Anatole-Touzet, CEO at Rennes University Hospital.
Philips and Rennes University Hospital already have multiple collaborations in the field of medical imaging, plus an innovation partnership in digital pathology - the first of its kind in France.